A person can be identified using his/her biometrics features. The biometrics features are generally unique to an individual and presence of two persons with similar biometrics features or a combination of biometrics features is rare and not unknown until today.
One of the important requirements of the of the security systems using biometrics is that the data used for ensuring the identity, the biometrics features for biometrics, must not be capable of duplication by any means.
But in present systems using card-based security, the data used to verify the identity is stored in the card itself and can be duplicated. The duplication of the card is made easy with the availability of the card copiers, a simple search for “Smart card copier” in the search engines such as www.google.com will provide many links and the resources for obtaining the copier tools.
When the data in the card is capable of duplication, the data can be also over-written or modified to control the access provided by the access control systems that are based on such cards.
There are many workarounds to prevent card duplication with the advancement of technologies, but at the same time, advancement is also made in technologies, such as card copier, risking the entire security infrastructure.
In case of biometrics, no special data is used or provided by the access control systems as compared to card-based systems. Instead the available data of the individual in form of biometrics features is used and such features are unique to the individual. Apart of the uniqueness, they should not be duplicated easily ensuring the effectiveness of the access control systems.
There are also methods available to duplicate the biometrics features. However the access control systems to shield against such attempts is rather impossible in case of card based systems. Some of the sensors that prevent the duplication of biometrics features are, but not limited to cell sensors and heat sensors.
The above sensors are available to prevent the duplication of biometrics features such sensors cannot be used in card based systems.
In case of security systems using biometrics, the features that are used for verification and identification must be secure enough to shield against attempts to swap entries between the individual (for example) all the stored database.
Hence the security of the biometrics features is highly important. An online method of verification and identification of the biometrics features is needed. In the online method the biometrics features are stored in a server and these features are entities that are used to decide the authenticity of the individuals.
With such security sensitiveness of the biometrics features, the said biometric features need to be stored in a server computer located in a secure environment and to use them for authenticity verification of the biometrics features of an individual.
During the authenticity verification, the biometrics features of the “person to be verified” is extracted and sent to the server and all the comparison takes place in the server only. One of the important advantages of this method is that the comparison takes place in a secured environment, as the server itself is located in a secure environment.
This method is completely in contrast with the existing technologies that do the verification locally that is, at the access point itself. Access Point is referred to as the security perimeter in the description.
The processes in the invention have the following components:
                Access Point        Client Software in the Access Point        Biometrics Acquisition Devices attached or embedded to/with the Access Point        Server Computer        Database Server Software in Server Computer        Biometrics Server Software in Server Computer        
Client software is a set of programs that reside at the Access Point that extracts the biometrics features from the “person to be verified” and transmits to the server for biometrics verification.
The biometrics acquisition devices are a set of computer hardware components that extract the biometrics raw data such as but not limited to fingerprint image in case fingerprint using fingerprint scanners, retina image in case of retina using retina scanners and iris image in case of iris using iris scanners.
The server computer is the computer hardware providing the computing platform for the database server and the biometrics server software. The server computer will be located in the secured environment.
The database server software is a set of computer software components that can be categorized or known as Relational Data Base Management System (RDBMS), Data Base Management System (DBMS), Object Relational Data Base Management System (ORDBMS). The examples of software systems are: Oracle® and Microsoft® SQL Server.
The biometrics server software is a set of computer software components that processes the biometrics features sent from the access point for registration or enrolment of the biometrics features and authentication of the biometrics features.
The authentication of the biometrics features can be categorized in two types, they are:
                Verification        This is a type of authentication in which the person to be verified is pre-determined using other types of identifications such as manual means or using an unique number allocated to the individual. In this type of authentication, the person is only verified to ensure that the person has the exactly the same biometrics features as the known individual.        Identification        This is a type of authentication in which the person is identified using his/her biometrics features. In this type of authentication, the identification of the person is not pre-determined and the identification is solely based on the biometrics features.        